British politics

The Barnsley by-election

Barnsley: the emergence of a nationalist protest vote?

Mar 4th 2011, 17:37by Bagehot

WHEN it comes to drawing firm conclusions about the state of British politics, some parliamentary by-elections are like flashes of lightning over a darkened plain—illuminating the whole landscape in a single instant. Others like the by-election held yesterday in the South Yorkshire seat of Barnsley Central offer something much less definite: a hint, at most, that the weather may be about to change.

The headlines this morning focus on the desperate fate of the Liberal Democrats, who fell from second place at the May 2010 election to sixth place (losing their deposit last night into the bargain). That is fair: as is the interest provoked by the second place showing of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), an unprecedented result in a Westminster contest for this Eurosceptic party.

That said, there are good reasons for not reading too much into the result in Barnsley. It is such a safe Labour seat that—though the contest was triggered by the conviction of the former Labour incumbent, Eric Illsley for expenses fraud—the party managed to extend its majority a bit, to 11,771 votes. Between the 2010 general election and yesterday's poll, the turnout plunged to just 36.5% of eligible voters.

The full results look like this:

Dan Jarvis (Lab) 14,724

Jane Collins (UKIP) 2,953

James Hockney (C) 1,999

Enis Dalton (BNP) 1,463

Tony Devoy (Ind) 1,266

Dominic Carman (LD) 1,012

Kevin Riddiough (Eng Dem) 544

Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 198

Michael Val Davies (Ind) 60

In effect, any analysis of these results amounts to parsing a series of protest votes, inasmuch as every vote not cast for Labour in Barnsley is a protest vote.

After speaking to a couple of thoughtful MPs whose opinions I value and scanning the blogosphere, here, then, are some necessarily tentative thoughts.

2. The big crisis for the Lib Dems is that they are no longer seen as an acceptable vehicle for protest votes. That may seem obvious, and indeed Lib Dem grandees were all over the airwaves this morning saying that this result means very little. It is, they intoned, a natural consequence of being in government, taking the tough decisions necessary to sort out the economic mess inherited from Labour, had they mentioned the disastrous economic mess they inherited from Labour, in government, tough decisions, and so on. But if the Lib Dems are no longer a party for protest votes, what are they for? In the dead of night, Mr Clegg must wake up in a cold sweat and worry that his party will never break out beyond its irreducible core vote. And how many diehard Lib Dems are there, once you strip away people who could not bring themselves to vote Labour or Tory in previous elections. Perhaps 5% of the population?

3. There is a painful irony for the Lib Dems here. Every vox pop interview with an ordinary voter generates the same complaints. Now that these Lib Dems are in coalition with the Tories, the voters thunder, they have been exposed as opportunists willing to sacrifice truth and principle to gain power. Here is the odd part. That is a perfectly accurate description of the Lib Dems before they came to power. They spent decades on doorsteps shamelessly attacking big party incumbents from the left or the right (depending on the seat), sucking up to every interest group that staggered into view and generally saying whatever they thought voters wanted to hear. That is why the Lib Dems, for all that they enjoyed a rather saintly image among the general public, have always been loathed by Labour and Tory politicians. Nothing, but nothing, they will tell you with a shudder of real distaste, stoops as low as a Lib Dem campaign pamphlet.

Now the sainted ones have joined the Conservatives in coalition (a decision that was arguably imposed on them by the electorate, which did not see fit to grant Labour and the Lib Dems enough votes between them to form a government), they are actually having to ditch the opportunism, keep their word and vote for endless unpopular policies that form part of their coalition agreement. And as a result they are hated up and down the land. As I said, there is an irony in there somewhere.

4. There is some evidence that this result is alarming for Nick Clegg personally. Mr Clegg's own seat of Sheffield Hallam is nearby, and Labour is adamant that part of the anti-Lib Dem backlash in Barnsley was specifically aimed at the Lib Dem leader. Writing for the New Statesman, the neighbouring South Yorkshire MP (and former Labour minister) Denis MacShane says today:

10 months ago the Lib Dems came second to Labour. Now they got fewer votes than the BNP. There is a South Yorkshire element to this. Nick Clegg is now known locally as the "Sheffield Fraudmaster" after the decision of his Lib Dem colleague, Vince Cable, to axe a £80 million loan to the Sheffield Forgemasters firm

5. Though Barnsley is a poor gauge of anything, as discussed above, it is certainly no comfort to anyone who worries that the slow decline of two party politics may pave the way for the sort of angry identity politics common on the continent of Europe. In country after country on the continent, parties that offer a palette of tough, negative messages about national identity, immigration, Islam, globalisation and/or the European Union pick up around 20% of the vote. In Barnsley, the combined vote share for UKIP and the British National Party (an outfit that until recently was closed to non-white members) came to just over 18%.

Now, nothing makes UKIP crosser than being described as the "BNP in blazers". And if you apply the useful French political shorthand of "clean right" versus "dirty right", UKIP sits on the clean side of the line, while the BNP is on the dirty side, along with the still-nastier English Defence League. Nor does UKIP peddle an anti-capitalist message of the sort popular among far-right parties in, say, France. The party wants to pull Britain out of the EU, but it is in favour of free trade.

But nonetheless, UKIP has started stressing some pretty tough policies on immigration as it attempts to move beyond its image as a single-issue party that is all about Europe. Euroscepticism is a poisoned chalice in British politics: the British public simultaneously dislike the EU, in the main, but also strongly dislike hearing about it. That means a party can be punished for over-emphasising EU-bashing messages, even when those messages chime with majority opinion.

Those worried about the rise of identity politics in Britain point to polling commissioned by an anti-fascist campaign group, Searchlight, which found a (surely exaggerated) 48% of Britons would, in the words of a Guardian newspaper report:

support an anti-immigration English nationalist party if it was not associated with violence and fascist imagery... A Populus poll found that 48% of the population would consider supporting a new anti-immigration party committed to challenging Islamist extremism, and would support policies to make it statutory for all public buildings to fly the flag of St George or the union flag

The Searchlight research has broken down attitudes to race, identity, immigration and nation into six groups. On the left are "confident multiculturals" and "mainstream liberals", comprising 24% of the population. On the far right sit "latent hostiles" and "active enmity" (totalling 23%), who share antagonistic attitudes to others and differ only in the degree of their antipathy and tolerance of extremism.

The centre of British politics are the "identity ambivalents" and "cultural integrationists". Cultural integrationists accept diversity as long as there is an integrated national culture, the rule of law, and respect for authority. This is the group to which David Cameron's call for a "muscular liberalism" is targeted. They are a quarter of the population. But the real swing voters are identity ambivalents (28%): economically insecure, worried about their local community, feeling threatened but open-minded and accepting of diversity - as long as their security is not threatened. So they feel more wage and job pressure from immigration, are anxious about their family's financial future, but are, for example, much less likely to think "Muslims create problems in the UK" than cultural integrationists.

Labour's vote is more weighted towards this group than any other. More black and ethnic minority voters are to be found here, and almost half of people who don't identify with a party are also identity ambivalent

Now, I do not believe that one poll, written up by an overtly political campaign group, can capture the intricacies of British views on race and identity. But that image of a public splintering into many groups suggests, to me, a potential problem for UKIP, as that party's leaders celebrate their second place in Barnsley.

IF UKIP's glass is half full, their strength lies in their ability to straddle different voter groups, and appeal to them all as the best place for a protest vote. Supporters of UKIP include social liberals and libertarians like their leader Nigel Farage, but also pretty angry nationalists: the sort of people who leave comments on blogs like this which casually refer to the dictatorship of the EUSSR snuffing out the last vestiges of British democracy. That group, I would argue, overlaps to an extent with Britons who worry about the weakening of British national identity in other ways, notably by multiculturalism and/or what they see as the dangerous power of Islam in Europe. Some self-identified UKIP supporters are, for example, admirers of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a populist who has called for the banning of the Koran.

But UKIP also appeals to mainstream Conservative voters who feel that David Cameron and his coalition government have betrayed core Tory principles over Europe, and that they have nowhere else to turn if they wish to stop the erosion of British sovereignty. That is an observation you will hear framed as a warning from Tory MPs such as Bill Cash, a veteran Eurosceptic. Writing today on ConservativeHome, Mr Cash says:

It was always obvious Labour were going to win Barnsley Central – but the result sends a clear message to the Coalition and the Conservative Party on their failure to deal with the European issue

Yet here is where the glass looks half-empty for UKIP, I would argue. Because—though I happen to think that the most strongly Eurosceptic Tories are wrong in their judgement of the relative costs and benefits of EU membership—such Tory Eurosceptics are not extremists. They are mainstream politicians, motivated in part by a strong attachment to parliamentary democracy (though I disagree with their over-gloomy assertion that British democracy is wrecked by EU membership).

And my hunch is that for UKIP to move much beyond its current core vote, it would have to dilute its message on, say, Islam or immigration, to pick up many more mainstream Conservatives. And that is precisely the opposite of what many core UKIP supporters want.

6. A final thought, from a Conservative MP who is actively involved in the Tory campaign for a No vote in May's referendum on switching from first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote for Westminster elections. Though in general AV is seen as favouring smaller parties, a Yes vote on AV would make UKIP less dangerous for almost all Tory MPs, he says (because a typical UKIP voter would be likely to place UKIP first, and unlikely to give a second preference to either Labour or the Lib Dems).

The weather is on the turn. But a nationalist storm is not inevitable.